Obama - "The Anti-Reagan"?

bob_2 · 06-18-09 9:40 pm

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:Despite his boldness, Barack Obama seems as fated to fail as were Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. And for the same reason: a belief in his own righteousness and moral superiority, and a belief that his ideals and his persona count mightily in the modern world. Wilson declaimed about America's fight to "make the world safe for democracy" when in harness with the British, French, Russian, Japanese and Italian empires, all slavering to feast on the carcasses of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires. By 1920, Wilson was a tragic failure, mocked by ex-allies and reviled by former enemies for having dishonored his own 14 Points. Jimmy Carter declared in 1977 that "we have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism that caused us to embrace any dictator who shared in that fear." So, we undermined Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza and the Shah, and got the Sandinistas and the Ayatollah Khomeini. As for Barack, he behaves on the world stage like some Ivy League kid ashamed of the people he came from, letting one and all on campus know that he is nothing like his benighted family with its sordid history. In Cairo, he confessed that America had a hand in dumping over the regime in Iran in 1953. He did not mention that the United States forced the retreat of Joseph Stalin's army from Iran in 1946. For the 100th time, he declared, "I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year." Is Obama unaware that Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia run prisons that make Guantanamo look like The Breakers at Palm Beach? How many Guantanamo inmates plead to be sent home to Muslim countries? In Trinidad, Obama sat for 55 minutes enduring Daniel Ortega's diatribe against the United States for mistreatment of Castro's Cuba and for the Bay of Pigs. Obama protested that he could not be held responsible for something that happened the year he was born. Why could not he say to Ortega: "We also intervened in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to block a communist takeover, and in Grenada in 1983. The only problem with the Bay of Pigs is that we should have done it right and removed the odious Cuban dictatorship, and put Fidel, Raul and Che up against that same wall where so many patriots perished and spared the Cuban people 50 years of tyranny and the prostitution of their island into a base camp for the greatest despotism of the 20th century." What is the matter with Obama that he cannot defend our Cold War conduct and Cold War presidents like Ike and JFK? Answer: Obama cannot, because at heart he buys into the anti-American narrative that ours is a deplorable history -- of genocide against the Indians, of slavery and segregation, of robbing Mexicans of their land and of disrespecting our Latin neighbors. Obama is determined to make the requisite apologies to show the world he does not condone the sins our fathers committed. Thus, as Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation has cataloged, Obama has apologized to Europe for our having "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." He apologized to Latin America for our having been "disengaged and at times ... sought to dictate." He told the Turks that we are "working through our own darker periods in our history. ... Our nation still struggles with the legacy of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans." Obama, however, did not ask the Turks to confess to their own "darker periods," which might have taken some time. Obama is the anti-Reagan. Where Reagan ever spoke of the greatness and glory of America, her history and heroes, her capacity to make the world all over again, Obama is like a dismal parson, forever reminding us -- and everyone within earshot -- of our own and our fathers' sins. Obama is not only demoralizing Middle America, he is driving away the God-and-country patriots who are sick of hearing this rot from professors and journalists, and prefer not to hear it from their president. He is ceding moral high ground to regimes and nations that do not deserve it. If Obama believes he can build himself up by tearing America down, he is mistaken. Cynical foreigners will view it with snickering contempt, patriotic Americans with disgust. What kind of leader is it who talks down his own country on foreign soil? America's performance in the Cold War was hardly flawless. But does anyone deny that we were on the right side, that the Soviet Empire and Mao's China and communist Vietnam and Castro's Cuba were on the side of tyranny -- and that the neutrals were by and large irrelevant or worse in that great cause? A nation is an extended family. While families fight and quarrel, often bitterly, you do not take the family quarrel outside the family. You don't hang the family's dirty linen on the communal clothesline. Obama, however -- like some Hollywood actress seeking sympathy and public approbation with her tell-all biography detailing how she was abused by her father -- trolls for popularity with America's adversaries by reciting for the benefit of the world all the sins his country has allegedly committed. When did this become the duty of the president of the United States? -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong." -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32195" target=_top>http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32195</a>

don · 06-19-09 5:55 pm

Hmmm, countries (and individuals) would benefit from doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly, don't you think? .

bob_2 · 06-20-09 12:14 am

If all are playing by the same rules. Flying planes into buildings and chopping heads off are just a few things I would be on guard against. What of all the good America represents. Obama feels a necessity to self deprecate what America is and has done, maybe he's the wrong guy for the job.

don · 06-20-09 6:05 am

What of all the good America represents. Obama feels a necessity to self deprecate what America is and has done... From part of <a href="http://allthatnatters.com/2009/05/14/transcript-president-obama-commencement-address-arizona-state-university/" target="_blank">Obama's speech at ASU</a><blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:We’ve become accustomed to the title of “military super-power,” forgetting the qualities that got us there — not just the power of our weapons, but the discipline and valor and the code of conduct of our men and women in uniform. The Marshall Plan, and the Peace Corps, and all those initiatives that show our commitment to working with other nations to pursue the ideals of opportunity and equality and freedom that have made us who we are. That’s what made us a super power. We’ve become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn’t reckless deals and get-rich-quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas — quality products and wise investments. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>I submit that there is a difference between self-deprecation and honest self-assessment. .

bob_2 · 06-20-09 9:50 am

You're not about to get a tax increase for the reckless spending that was so urgent that has produced 9 to 16 % unemployment rate depending on who is calculating the figure. Assess that.

bob_2 · 06-20-09 10:08 am

Don, you don't like "Tear down this wall!!!". You would rather have some country like Iran saying, we have a right to wipe another country off the map and weapons capable of doing it. What would you think of Obama standing beside a crater that use to be Israel saying this same speech??? Would your response be, "Turn the other cheek"? If you and others proponents of secularizing society, I propose that Christian rules should not be the rule of the day, but power and position to defend survival of the defenseless or vulnerable. (Message edited by Bob_2 on June 20, 2009)

bob_2 · 06-20-09 11:03 am

Don, I like these lyrics from decades back by The Kinks, <blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:The Kinks - Living On A Thin Line Lyrics All the stories have been told Of kings and days of old, But there's no England now. All the wars that were won and lost Somehow don't seem to matter very much anymore. All the lies we were told, All the lies of the people running round, They're castles have burned. Now I see change, But inside we're the same as we ever were. Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line, Living this way, each day is a dream. What am I, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Now another century nearly gone, What are we gonna leave for the young? What we couldn't do, what we wouldn't do, It's a crime, but does it matter? Does it matter much, does it matter much to you? Does it ever really matter? Yes, it really, really matters. Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Now another leader says Break their hearts and break some heads. Is there nothing we can say or do? Blame the future on the past, Always lost in blood and guts. And when they're gone, it's me and you. Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line, Tell me now, what are we supposed to do? Living on a thin line. <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

don · 06-20-09 12:13 pm

Obama in Cairo<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!>quote:"America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>Obama is scolding the Arab world, and Iran in particular, for their attitude toward Israel. Time will tell how he negotiates. .

bob_2 · 06-20-09 12:22 pm

Funny, though, Don, with the recent election in Iran, not much in the way of chastisement by the "Messiah", Mr. Obama. Time will tell if he really is a statesman or .... just another Muslim.

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#1 06-18-09 9:40 pm